Blog Index

This week’s blog discussions include … If banks cannot connect their own systems, how can they connect global trade? For years, the global trade conversation has been dominated by one question: where should we move our supply chains? China is risky, America is unpredictable, Europe is expensive and geopolitical tensions are making international commerce look…

This week’s main blog discussions include … AI and the big question: why would you ever call McKinsey or Gartner? For many years, McKinsey has been the go-to firm for advice and Gartner for research but, with AI, why bother? In fact, there is a lot of debate about whether AI will replace consultants and…

This week’s main blog discussions include … What’s really happening with Nubank? Nubank wants to go global but not like Revolut. Everyone assumes Nubank wants to be like the next Revolut. They’re wrong. Revolut wants to build one financial superapp for the world. Nubank is building something different: a global banking empire that does not…

This week’s main blog discussions include … How many employees does it take to create $1 billion of value? I was looking at some numbers comparing the world’s biggest banks with the world’s biggest fintech firms and realised that we may have been measuring the wrong thing. We normally compare banks and fintechs by customers,…

This week’s main blog discussions include … What the FinTech Book Club thinks of “Intelligent Bank” The FinTech Book Club recently devoted its discussion to my latest book Intelligent Bank, and the overall reaction was strongly positive. That was a relief as I’m a good friend of these guys, but that does not make them…

This week’s main blog discussions include … 25 years after 9/11: An attack on America, capitalism or the world? On Tuesday, 11th September 2001, I was flying back from Nice, France, after a conference. We arrived home and switched on the television. What we saw was horrific. At 8:46 that morning in New York, 13:46…

This week’s main blog discussions include … The true cost of AI (Part One) There is a rather awkward conversation beginning in boardrooms about artificial intelligence. For the last few years, the question has been what AI can do, how quickly companies can deploy it and how many people it might replace, but the question…

This week’s main blog discussions include … The SWOT of AI in banking I was sitting this morning and thinking about how fantastic Agentic AI, autonomous commerce and programmable money is. It is the focus of my next Pulp Finction book Birth of a Unicorn being released in December. The thing is that there is…

This week’s main blog discussions include … The TrustWeb: Revisiting the Origins of Moneykind Ten years ago, I wrote a series of blogs called The Origins of Moneykind. They accompanied the launch of Digital Human and explored a simple question: where does money come from? Looking back a decade later, I’m surprised how little I…

This week’s main blog discussions include … Crypto wanted to get rid of banks. Now they are banks. When Bitcoin launched in 2008, the whole idea was to get rid of banks and intermediaries. In 2026, they’ve learned the lesson I learnt years ago. That’s how the world works. You need intermediaries. The whole idea…